INFANTS CAN TELL FRIENDS FROM STRANGERS JUST BY HEARING THEM LAUGH
In the company of an old friend, conversation and humor flow naturally. However, when we have to interact with a stranger, things can feel awkward even when you’re both laughing along — and this can be easily sensed from the outside as well. According to a new study, infants as young as five months old […]
INFANTS CAPABLE OF COMPLEX BABBLE MAY GROW INTO STRONGER READERS
Some skills needed for literacy may be developed in infancy Infants’ early speech production may predict their later literacy, according to a study published October 2018 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Kelly Farquharson from Florida State University and colleagues. Children with difficulties in identifying letters are more likely to develop reading impairments, but […]
WHO’S BETTER AT BABY TALK, MOM OR DAD?
The latest research shows that moms and dads use baby talk in different ways, and that boys and girls respond to them differently. In a study published in the online edition of Pediatrics, researchers looked at the language interactions between 33 late preterm and term infants and their parents by capturing 3,000 hours of recordings. […]
RESEARCH FINDS (AGAIN!) INFANTS SENSITIVE TO PLEASANT TOUCH
Cognitive neuroscientist Merle Fairhurst and colleagues of the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, Germany, knew that previous studies with adults show that a specific type of touch receptor is activated in response to a particular stroking velocity, leading to the sensation of “pleasant” touch. They hypothesized that this type […]
BABIES DEPENDENT ON OPIOIDS NEED TOUCH, NOT TECH
A physician in Kansas has worked for years to tackle infant mortality. She often treats newborns in a high-tech Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) with intricate things whirring and beeping. That, she says, is not the place for a baby like Lili. Lili’s mom, Victoria, used heroin for the first two trimesters of her pregnancy, […]
INFANT MASSAGE: STRESS AND RELAXATION
Infant massage is one tool we have to help reshape our child’s interpretations of the world, to release her pain, grief, and fear, and to open her up to love and joy. Touch meets a baby’s needs for physical contact, affection, security, stimulation, and movement. Skin-to-skin contact is especially effective, such as during breastfeeding, bathing, […]
WHO SHOULD MASSAGE THE BABY, and WHY?
When I first began teaching Infant Massage in 1977, I brought my baby to classes and demonstrated the strokes on him. This worked out very well, and I continued when my second baby came along. It was nice because they then received massage twice a day! Then I began training Infant Massage Instructors for what […]
JOY AND THE INFANT BRAIN
The wise remain aware of the spirituality of life. Every mother has felt the stillness and the stir of Eternal Consciousness in her womb. Remember that. Bring that mysterious, silent moment into the clamoring present. —Vimala McClure from The Tao of Motherhood “The most complex information-processing device ever constructed is on its way,” says […]
INFANTS’ LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT IS ACCELERATED BY ATTENTIVE PARENTS
According to a new study from The University of Iowa and Indiana University, how parents react to their infants’ babbling impacts their language development. The research was recently published in the journal Infancy. The research team, includes Julie Gros-Louis, assistant professor of psychology at the University of Iowa. A study by Gros-Louis in 2003 compared […]
BABIES SUBCONSCIOUSLY PROCESS EMOTIONS
Infants perceive fearful looks from the whites of your eyes The eyes are the mirror of the soul, often revealing the emotional state of those around us. Even babies appear to perceive such signals. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig have discovered that even seven-month-old infants react […]